


After Care

by Olorisstra



Series: Hydrospanner in the works [8]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Hostage Situation, Implied Violence, M for themes, unfeeling scientific mindset at play in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:46:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olorisstra/pseuds/Olorisstra
Summary: It had cost Mad infinitely more.





	After Care

CL-OWK-25 is the one who asks for flash-training.

He presents a well-articulated argument to explain why he feels it’s necessary to their development. He supports it with the statistics he has previously asked permission to view and has then surveyed under supervision, and he backs it up with the results of an inquiry he suggested be conducted in the clone trooper ranks to an interested scientist.

Taun We is positively impressed by the logic behind it and by the points the experiment makes.

CL-OWK-25 has clearly paid attention to the training he has received so far.

The experiment's conclusions are sound, the training he requests is both feasible and structured in a tight but reasonable schedule, if one with a speedy pace that will allow for the resources not to be wasted and for CL-OWK-25 to reach his objectives well before the two years they have left, before Jedi Knight Kenobi is supposed to arrive, come to an end.

She grants it and rewards him by granting him both the credit for presenting this idea and an inclusion of his work in the official papers as a subset of the training programs for the CL-OWK Project.

She also tests him, by giving him the duty to select his own material, under Sul Wren’s supervision.

 

* * *

 

It is not hard for information on the abilities and practices to be recovered and assembled in a proper schedule. It is harder to discern true facts from tall tales and bogey stories.

Everything that is not firsthand knowledge or information recorded by reliable historical sources and archived in accredited open archives, Thrive discards immediately.

What is has left, gets cross-checked. He divides the material by timeline, event, way the information has been recorded, and then puts flags on conflicting data, keeping all versions and underlining where they line up and where they differ, to later be able compare and contrast them. Then he subdivides them further, differentiating between history of the Jedi Order, powers exhibited by the Jedi and recorded info regarding their weapon of choice, the lightsaber.

Sul Wren watches his work without offering suggestions, only occasionally pointing out when he is forgetting about something. There is no help and no judgement coming from the Kaminoan, just a vague sense of having somewhat vaguely impressed the other sentient, but not particularly so.

He doesn’t care about that, because not only he is proud of himself but both Six O’Clock and Tee Four are impressed with his work and their opinion is the one who really count, for him.

 

* * *

 

 

Mad is given the program Thrive developed and then he is sat down and he is flash-taught it the hard way, as he always was, through the long-since discarded original info download machines. They are not selected for efficiency, there are at least six generations of improved machinery that came after them that would be better, but because they do what the Kaminoans need them to do in an excruciatingly painful way.

Learning only ever happens through pain, for him.

 

 

* * *

 

Twenty-Eight is ready when Mad comes in stumbling, straight from his latest batch of learning.

He takes his north star’s gloved hands and wraps his fingers around them, guiding him to the bed. At a nod of his head, Twine slides in the bathroom to get the rag and the bowl of cold water. Clone is already turning the blankets down and moving their datapads off the bed, standing on the side and out of the way.

Twenty-Eight waits for Mad to be sitting down and then tugs his star’s boots and socks off, freeing his feet from the coarse material. He guides him to lie down and tugs off the gloves from his scarred hands, sitting down at Mad’s side and starting to massage the fingers, one by one and going from first knuckle down to the nail while his brothers bustle in the background.

Mad is already out, like he always is after this sessions, his face frowning even in his sleep.

Clone approaches the bed when he’s put all the datapads away, sitting at the foot and putting Mad’s feet in his lap, to massage them like Twenty-Eight is doing for the fingers. Twine comes back with the bowl, taking his spot at the top of the bed and putting Mad’s head on his knees, carefully setting the now-damp rag on the forehead without smudging the make-up.

“He’s burning again.” Twine whispers, gently tugging Mad’s bound hair free from under his back and slipping them over Mad’s shoulder, to rest on his chest. “They must have loaded him up with a lot of things.”

“I think so too.” Clone murmurs, gently pressing his thumbs in the swell of Mad’s feet. “His feet feels like they let him seize up for a while.” He is not looking at what he’s doing, his eyes resting on Mad’s face, upper teeth biting into his bottom lip, in a show of anxiety.

“His hands are a mess too.” Twenty-Eight confirms, pressing his lips thin.

For a moment, he indulges his temper, letting himself feel and live and accept his anger as right. Then, he paces his breathing and rolls his shoulders, willing himself to become a sieve, letting all the bad feelings leak away. He cannot afford them, cannot afford the fear they would engender in Mad and he refuses to give his north star reason to think that he has to draw even more Kaminoan attention on himself than he already does.

Mad always shuts all of them out during these sessions, closing them out of his mind and only parceling out whatever he has learned later on, after he’s processed and memorized it. It makes Twenty-Eight want to grit his teeth, not being able to at least be at his north star’s side in their minds, but he makes himself accept it, because it is Mad’s will to take this on himself alone.

He wishes he had stood like Mad, back when they were first separated from those-left-behind. It’s where he should have been, at Mad’s side instead of clinging at him, but he’d been bewildered and bereft from having been ripped away from the one that now calls himself Tee Four, who was the one he had been instinctively trying to bond with.

He had been hurt, scared, and Mad had been a blazing bonfire of will and rage and protectiveness.

One he had latched on to, like Clone and Twine, letting him take action while he tried to put himself back together.

It had cost him his chance.

It had cost Mad infinitely more.

The least he can do, now, is take care of his north star.

And take care of him, with the help of his brothers, **is** what he does, lowering the lights until the brightness won’t hurt Mad’s eyes and getting him tucked into bed, once they are done massaging his muscles to a lax state, curling to his side with one of the many medical datapads he’s been given access to, to read more on how to better heal his north star, faster and more efficiently.

There will be food, when Mad wakes, and Rylothian Harmonies for him to listen while he eats. Meanwhile, Clone and Twine will play card games and tell the youngest, and bravest, of them about their day and what they learned.

Later, after they have shared knowledge and helped Mad center himself, Twenty-Eight will unwrap the leather from his hair and brush them until they are untangled and shiny, only rebinding them when his north star will be ready to fall asleep again.

It is the very least he, they, can do.


End file.
